Amid the deluge of holiday music that comes in November and December, Mariah Carey’s "Merry Christmas II You" and Susan Boyle’s "The Gift" are poised to make all those other seasonal crooners sound like off-key carolers.

In 2007, Forbes named Abu Dhabi the wealthiest city in the world, and like nouveaux riches everywhere, it has gone on a bit of a spending spree. Local branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums are under construction. They'll join the Abu Dhabi Poetry Academy and the Arab Heritage Village, with exhibits on life in the Gulf centuries before the mall with the ski slope moved into the neighborhood. And then there's Zaha Hadid's swooping design for the five-theater Performing Arts Center, which will make the Sydney Opera House look like a grade-school auditorium. Aside from the sand that still occasionally blows across the modern cityscape, the Abu Dhabi of a few decades ago wouldn't recognize itself today. But the most impressive display of cultural pride—not to mention deep pockets—sits on the floor of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque. It is the world's largest prayer rug—60,546 square feet of vibrant wool, handmade in Iran. It is so dazzling, you almost don't notice the gold-leaf domes...

Parents should think twice before pushing their children toward the altar. According to "Marriage: The Good, the Bad and the Greedy," a paper published by the American Sociological Association, married people are significantly less likely than the unmarried to visit their parents and siblings. Only 60 percent surveyed admitted contacting their parents in the past month, as compared with 80 percent of never-married respondents.Only 30 percent said they'd socialized with friends in the same period, in contrast to 70 percent of unmarrieds.The silver lining? Married couples are asking less of others: from 1985 to 2004, the number of people they confided in dropped by one third, while the amount of deep discussion with their spouses rose. Here's to wedded bliss—and isolation.

The growing threat that your good name will be unfairly besmirched online has given rise to a new industry: Internet reputation repair. Companies like ReputationHawk and Reputation Defender aim to push offending material down a few search pages, where most users won't see it. They do it by creating multiple links to positive data about you, crowding out the negative, for $4,000 to $30,000. For clients not yet tarnished, they recommend creating a "preemptive wall" of positive online content, to ward off future attacks. Jeff Henderson of DONE! SEO calls this "the next generation of public relations." Of course, the same trick could work for bad guys, but the services say they refuse clients who might do harm to others.

My 4-year-old is asking for apple juice, all we have is margarita mix and I have two deadlines and 400 e-mails to attend to before I can make it to the market. As for my husband? I believe Raj hasn't seen the inside of a grocery store since he worked at one back in high school. Stocking the fridge is my task, as well as getting our son to school, scheduling his speech-therapy appointments, making dinner … I wouldn't mind if raising our child was my sole job, but it's not. My husband and I both work full time, and though he's definitely a modern, "hands-on" dad, I'm still juggling most things kid-related.Still, Raj is more dedicated than any father I know. He stayed at home for the first year of our son's life while I worked, and has been present every step of the way—from changing diapers to teaching our son classic Bollywood dance moves (an endless source of amusement). It's clear that, like a growing number of his male peers, he sees parenting and career as equal priorities. I'm...

They're bungling ballads in Kazakhstan, mauling Bollywood favorites in India and shout-singing Beyoncé numbers in Bolivia. Most every country—even those that lack running water and free elections—has its own version of "American Idol." This is not necessarily a bad thing. The very American idea that anyone can be a star has helped break down rigid class barriers in several countries. In places where the concept of democracy is still shaky, "Idol" lets viewers have the vote—last year alone, the global number of votes cast for contestants within the "Idol" franchise exceeded 2 billion. But as for "Idol" 's influence on music? Let's just say now that regional productions of the show have infiltrated 39 countries, "Idol" has lowered the artistic bar so drastically that Britney and 'N Sync sound like creative geniuses by comparison.Listen to singing amateurs from Argentina to Afghanistan, and you'll discover that they all sound the same, down to the Céline Dion melodrama in their voices...

Who knew back in 1981, when Journey released its inspirational, lighter-in-the-air anthem “Don't Stop Believin',” that it would be embraced by gangsters and presidential hopefuls alike? But this month alone the song set the final scene for the final episode of “The Sopranos” and served as the soundtrack for a high-profile spoof on that HBO series finale starring none other than Bill and Hillary Clinton. The latter production, on hillaryclinton.com, was part of a campaign song contest where voters cast online ballots to decide which pop hit should become Hillary's song for the 2008 presidential race. Journey's ubiquitous hit was not chosen, or even nominated, but the band's former lead singer Steve Perry is not complaining. Perry explains to NEWSWEEK's Lorraine Ali why music and politics don't mix, but Journey, baseball, serial killers and the mafia do.
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Go get your flashlight—there's a mystery we need to solve. Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, who vanished from movie theaters nearly 70 years ago, suddenly reappears this week. Where has she been? And can the teenager time forgot appeal to a generation obsessed with the Pussycat Dolls? Let's get to the bottom of this.Before the new "Nancy Drew" movie, the 16-year-old crimefighter had last hit the silver screen in 1939. Back then, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's series of novels (by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene) was just nine years old. Now, nearly 200 books later, the Nancy of the novels has traded the blue roadster for a hybrid, and she's been one of Simon & Schuster's most bankable brands since 1979, when it bought the rights from Stratemeyer. Apparently that didn't impress the movie industry, which has co-opted just about every other boomer-era character, from Inspector Gadget to the Brady Bunch. In Hollywood, Nancy Drew couldn't get, as they say, arrested.Nancy did have a short-lived ...

They're bungling ballads in Kazakhstan, mauling Bollywood favorites in India and shout-singing Beyoncé numbers in Bolivia. Most every country—even those that lack running water and free elections—has its own version of "American Idol." This is not necessarily a bad thing. The very American idea that anyone can be a star has helped break down rigid class barriers in several countries. In places where the concept of democracy is still shaky, "Idol" lets viewers have the vote—last year alone, the global number of votes cast for contestants within the "Idol" franchise exceeded 2 billion. But as for "Idol" 's influence on music? Let's just say now that regional productions of the show have infiltrated 39 countries, "Idol" has lowered the artistic bar so drastically that Britney and 'N Sync sound like creative geniuses by comparison.Listen to singing amateurs from Argentina to Afghanistan, and you'll discover that they all sound the same, down to the Céline Dion melodrama in their voices...

Go get your flashlight—there's a mystery we need to solve. Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, who vanished from movie theaters nearly 70 years ago, suddenly reappears this week. Where has she been? And can the teenager time forgot appeal to a generation obsessed with the Pussycat Dolls? Let's get to the bottom of this.Before the new "Nancy Drew" movie, the 16-year-old crimefighter had last hit the silver screen in 1939. Back then, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's series of novels (by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene) was just nine years old. Now, nearly 200 books later, the Nancy of the novels has traded the blue roadster for a hybrid, and she's been one of Simon & Schuster's most bankable brands since 1979, when it bought the rights from Stratemeyer. Apparently that didn't impress the movie industry, which has co-opted just about every other boomer-era character, from Inspector Gadget to the Brady Bunch. In Hollywood, Nancy Drew couldn't get, as they say, arrested.Nancy did have a short-lived ...